One thing that I was meaning to write on my blog on Friday was a discussion I had with someone regarding reality television. Pretty much the person I was talking to was trying to tell me that everything on reality television is real and that there’s no way that the TV networks deliberately edit footage to suit their own needs. He used the show “Kid Nation” as evidence. Now admittedly before Friday I had never even watched a scene of the show so my argument was based purely on my views toward TV stations. He told me that he thought that an 11 year old (I think) contestant on Kid Nation, Taylor DuPriest was a (and I quote) “Total bitch”, now how you can call an 11 year old a “total bitch” astounds me but it’s not the point of the argument. I argued that without a doubt, what we were seeing on TV about this contestant was really what the network (in this case CBS) wanted us to see and what was going to get them the most ratings, and it in no way reflected this persons true personality (I think we can all agree that people do ‘act’ on reality TV). He of course argued that we were seeing the “whole picture” and that the networks had a vested interest to show us the truth. Now how someone could actually believe that what they saw on TV was ‘real’ mystifies me, but after googling this contestants name you will come some very nasty things that have been said including death threats which just goes to show just how many people believe everything they see on television. Unfortunately our media is controlled by advertisers and the dollar, and unfortunately many peoples opinions are controlled by the media so I guess I’ll just have to “Deal with it” (sorry had to throw that one in somewhere).